well i'm tom arbonne washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture from the labor battle in wisconsin to the front lines of environmental protection the republicans need the koch brothers permission for everything these days and sixteen million strong and growing as the number of american children living in poverty increases republican screw them over by cutting off their assistance programs plus your congressman peter king is launching a new which the u.s. and american muslims are the target in his scope so how will dividing america make

it stronger. you need to know this things are getting personal in wisconsin yesterday koch brothers lapdogs scott walker called out the democratic state senate minority leader mark miller for sabotaging negotiations between the two parties and one of the filibustering democratic senators spencer coggs responded by saying that all the democratic senators are firmly behind their leader mark no there are reports yesterday that filibustering democrats were willing to negotiate a return to wisconsin but walker rejected those negotiations calling them ridiculous it's like republicans and democrats are still at an indefinite standoff over what to do in wisconsin but with the majority was consonants and americans firmly in support of public unions collective bargaining rights is the time for walker to throw in the towel joining me now with more on this issue is one of those

wisconsin democrats who are taking a stand state senator chris larsen senator walk of the program. thank you so much for having me the associated press is reporting that e-mails released by scott walker's office indicate he may be willing to partially compromise expanding slightly the number of areas where he'll a lot of collective bargaining do you first of all do you know about this and secondly rather you are not it would you interpret this is an attempt by him just to flip the news cycle to his benefit i mean his office did release these things or might something come out of this yeah i think he's just trying to distract from the greater story here and that's that he's still attacking worker rights. and in effect is we put the solutions for we put other solutions forward and what he's pointing at right now are the beginning of discussions they're not necessarily negotiations we asked him to have negotiations which with that letter yesterday saying ok you know let's start making these more formal instead of doing that he

used the letter as a prop to wave around in the charade while he name called us. instead of actually engaging in real discussions and bringing this to the table so the letters in the e-mails that he's pointing at they're not necessarily negotiation it's more like the first thing that happens when you step on a used car lot you know there's no final offer there's no real negotiations it's just the beginning of it and i think it's unfortunate that he's politicizing it instead of engaging right and he has yet to go to his bosses the koch brothers to find out what the final price is going to be for the car wisconsin republican congressman jim sensenbrenner was unable to successfully hold a town meeting in i think it's pronounced while it's so so because people kept asking about you guys and and the congress got so angry that he ended the meeting early are you aware of the level of support you have in wisconsin and nationally are you guys feel when you know beleaguered or void out by this. you know i mean

that's that's where we get a lot of our strength you know the fact that there have been tens of thousands of people marching on the capitol we hear from thousands of them the. e-mailing phone calls and we can see pictures and videos on twitter and on facebook of what's going on so it's really lopsided the amount of support that we've got and i watched the video from that i found it interesting how they tried to kill by about what was actually in this budget repair bill and i'm thrilled because the supporters knew exactly what was it and you know how many times in in history to people know what's contained in a hundred forty four page piece of legislation thank people are engaged people are paying attention and there's not any way around this the pressure is really on those republicans what they're going to do if they are going to couto to the right in this race to the bottom and go with walker on the sinking ship or if they're going to side with the working people who have stood up and spoken and know that they want a future they don't want to see the working class divided and that's exactly what this bill seeks to do this constant state senator chris larsen from illinois thank

you sir so much for being with us. the wisconsin democratic party has filed an ethics complaint against governor walker claiming that he violated campaign finance rules by asking for support from beleaguered republican colleagues phone man he thought was david koch on a prank call a few weeks ago seems like everything republicans want to do nowadays moscow through the koch brothers former chairman of the house energy committee congressman henry waxman said it like this when describing environmental regulation. although it seems to matter is what koch industries think science is niall partisanship and the rising power of special interest are deeply intertwined and they feed off each other koch industries benefits immensely from the rollback of the u.p.a. regulations. so it backs republican candidates who advocate this position and it funds so is that the case whether it's environmental or labor policy the

republicans have to first ask permission from the koch brothers and what can we do to advance progressive policies in the face of a billion dollar headwind to speak to this i'm pleased to welcome from capitol hill california congressman henry waxman congressman welcome to the program used to be with you thank you back in one nine hundred ninety you were a major hero you still locker played in this regard fighting against polluters on behalf of the clean air act did you ever a bajan back then that people who own companies like koch industries that literally kill people with cancers and make billions for their owners would end up calling the shots for america as republicans i am amazed where we are right now the republican party had champions for the environment there were many who worked with us to pass that legislation in fact when we finally worked out the compromises on the bill it passed almost unanimously in the house and the senate but now the republican party as a party has become the science deniers there in the pockets of guys like the cokes

and the cokes are just ordinary conservative republicans one of the koch brothers ran against ronald reagan because he thought he was too liberal in one nine hundred eighty but now that the supreme court is says it so that you could put unlimited amounts of money into campaigns the koch's are standing up putting in their money and trying to call it fact calling the shots with the republican majority in the house of representatives to give you an example please our committee the energy and commerce committee which has jurisdiction over energy policy and environmental issues jordi of the republicans received money from the koch brothers and signed a pledge that they would try to strip the e.p.a. of its jurisdiction to go after the polluters that were causing global warming in the key. payne they put it at least forty million dollars that we know about electric public in candidates and now they're telling the republican party what

they want and moving them very very far to the extreme and that even libertarian but extreme right wing new libertarians because they don't want government to tell them what to do because they want to make the maximum profits but they're usually not so libertarian when they want to tell a woman that she can't decide whether to have insurance that would cover a legal medical procedure or reproductive rights. to what extent is and by the way i mean if my recollection is right that environmental pressure came about as a result of the efforts of richard nixon in part. to what extent is the american average americans confusion about global warming i mean you look at the poll numbers and they're just startling the number of americans who don't understand or have believed misinformation to what extent do you think that that is the result of things like well funded and oil industry funded right wing think tanks getting their shills out in the media or fox news and that sort of thing it's the it's the

it's the accumulation of all of those echo chambers that are funded by the koch brothers and the right wing and so people who see themselves as republicans here the republican leaders saying over and over again oh this is all a hoax that's what senator inhofe told our committee it's all a hoax and of course they have in mind in their minds that one of the chief spokespeople to do something about this problem was former vice president al gore so they think it's a partisan issue but science has never been a partisan matter you look at the evidence and you've based the evidence reach conclusions and almost all reputable scientists have reached the conclusion not just in this country but around the world that the that the temperature is getting very very warm it's causing. climate change in ways we never imagined floods and droughts and very strange cold winters like we're suffering in the

united states lack of food coming out of russia and pakistan there's sort of ring from the droughts it's just a very very disturbing weather patterns and almost half of the north pole is now been dissolved in because of the heating of the planet so the approach of republicans is to say oh look at that evidence it would be as if my doctor said to me i've got to better. school i'm a specialist and i think you have cancer and i would scour the country to find a doctor who would assure me that i shouldn't worry about it and if i told the doctor that i'm feeling fine how could he think i have cancer and say well you just do even though you're feeling fine i would say well if he doesn't know for sure why i'm feeling fine he's probably made the whole thing up this is the approach the republicans. or the extremists in the republican party are taking i think most republicans in the congress know this is all this is all a. ridiculous position they don't want to do things because they're hearing from

their peak campaign contributors but the american people think well maybe the science isn't subtle i had the same thing when we had the tobacco industry before my committee every time we had a hearing on tobacco the industry was insistent parading their scientists who said it's not so clear and there's no clear consensus yet and that science is still open because there was a mess just to keep people smoking and people did it died because of it and now in this issue of climate change and and carbon emissions they're trying to make people think it is a real it isn't true but we see the evidence and they're wrong very well said congressman waxman thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you still ahead here. still ahead here on the big picture with the sixteen million american children living in poverty you'd think americans would try to help them out well think again up next we'll explain how america's children are in the republicans

crosshairs. lindsey lowe and. the preacher. said she speaks she's a mother you know she says she's a. who

is screwing america's children are sixteen million children living in poverty right now if trends continue in order of all the children in our nation will be living in poverty we haven't seen numbers this troubling since the great depression and what one of the republicans want to do about it cut services to low income children programs in the republicans crosshairs include the head start programs the child nutrition assistance program and a wide array of other education health care and support programs all designed for and serving disadvantaged children so in a time of unprecedented child poverty republicans cup programs aimed at preventing child poverty these guys really that heartless here offer his take your andro

president and executive director of the i and rand institute you're on welcome to the program thanks every i knew you save up the stop expression for me to take it off no actually this kind of stuff is in the news every single day would you want to be a rich person in a poor country. i want to be a rich person in a free country i want a country in which the government is not taking from some and giving to others i want a country in which the government leaves business alone and lives the private market alone to create the jobs that poverty is who advocated through market forces and redistribution of wealth a system that has proven to be a dramatic failure so rich people have more money than ever before so why are there so many poor people they are lazy unproductive well no because the government i think i think government policy is going to regulation is government controls inhibit job growth by the way they do create distortions in the allocation of well

some people away the richer than they should be and would be in a free market and some people away than they would be in a free market because government chooses their locations instead of leaving it to the markets by iran who would have a lot richer if we allowed the markets to function properly you know it sounds great you point to any country or society in the history of the world where everybody act in total totally selfishly and it produced a positive society your health a nation where this this free morrow or i nearly every night it states the united states in the nineteenth century early twentieth century hong kong where an era where he stood in one thousand nine hundred there you can label it but that's that's not guilty there are then the gilded age he was ran for the united states then it was worse then than it is now. we created so many jobs during that period of so i did nguyen's and people the poor the hungry the suffering from all over the world came to this country that's nothing so bad in america that millions and millions and millions of people came here and we fed them and we clothe them and

today they are our ancestors they are great grandparents and they created a better life for us so you know it took what is much better back in the people will be coming to america the growth that freedom produce iran people have come into this part of this continent since the fifteen hundreds it wasn't unique to the late nineteenth century during the gilded age you know why is it you i is there when our taxes were the highest in our social safety net was the strongest during the l.b.j. nixon ford carter administrations we didn't have the problem with poverty that we have now it wasn't anywhere near as. it was much worse and you know it was much worse not to talk about inflation and corruption and crime and the two reading cities nobody nobody you know lyndon johnson could be back half and figo ammeters seventies you know that he will the basis of fairness feyerick a first class in the united states. you know the quite the contrary if you look at the graphs and thomas old has done this quite carefully if you look at the graphs

the growth in the middle class stops with the establishment of the great society and johnson it was growing dramatically through the one nine hundred fifty s. and one nine hundred sixty s. and it's holt's and declines into the ninety seventy's eighty's and ninety's look why i realize it came to a screeching halt the eighty's was reaganomics but l.b.j. was worley's it was not the eighty's. no l.b.j. is ok sixty three through sixty eight great and you see them bolting and declining and they suddenly decline and the richard nixon and economy declines it's horrible economy about you i wish that. each one of those three decades you had more than three point two percent g.d.p. growth the best of the entire century not in real terms not in real terms in the seventies not a real terms at all in the seventy's and you have well over fifty percent unemployment do you not you will see on country is what we need in this country is more freedom the fact that somebody is poor is not a moral claim on my life it doesn't mean that it's right for the government to force me to pay for them and for a dozen somebody a senior that's

a whole these are different people it's a it's a it's a really easy word to throw out but when you look at research like you and i'm sure you're familiar with this wilkerson pick it spoke to the spirit level the you know equality trust that u.k. and shows that more equal societies are healthier both physically mentally emotionally and unequal societies like the u.s. how do you respond i would put a bet on the table and you can you could take this bet if we lowered all the immigration standards in this in this country to europeans and you can load all of that is when. i think the people would flow europeans would come here in the millions in spite of all the problems and its fight in fact i don't like the society we have today in america we need to improve dramatically things here are still better than they are in europe in spite of the it's wonderfully quality it's nice nice rhetoric you're on your best will never happen because nobody will ever would it's modest already coming never know what silicon valley they. want the

freedom people who anybody who are in a stripper news stude wants to be here you're a yes but countries like the us thank you so much for being with us that i'm all right pleasures always good good talking with you this type of tone deaf behavior from the republican parties and surprises after all and not speaking of your audience not a republican and an objectivist but the republicans are the same guys who in a time of historically high unemployment want to cut off unemployment insurance and the same guys who when facing an all time high of uninsured americans fifty million wanted to repeal health reform the same guys who on the heels of a financial crisis want to kill wall street reform legislation the same guys who are in response to the b.p. oil spill want to kill alternative energy legislation and keep giving the oil industry three billion dollars a year and welfare payments and finally do the same guys who type of red record high budget deficits want to give their millionaire and billionaire buddies i think x. cut they could have paid for all the things i just described in my opinion a change of leadership and maybe today is a perfect day to look at alternative it's international women's day in sweden forty

percent of the members of their parliament are women in norway thirty eight percent are women in finland thirty four percent are women i'm guessing if we saw that level of female representation in the united states congress that we see we wouldn't see a fifth of our children in poverty or the rest of these crucial family programs on the chopping block. it is time for a daily poll your chance to tell us what you think or question for the day will the republican lapdogs continue to give billionaires tax cuts rather than helping children living in poverty are your choices a yes they're cutting head start child interest is that's and support programs for poor children or b. now they're not tone deaf so far the results are one hundred percent yes you still have time to vote just get to thom hartmann dot com let us know what you think the polls will be open until tomorrow morning.

republican chairman of the house homeland security committee peter king is set to officially launch is investigating figurines in the american muslim communities this thursday despite pleas to broaden his investigations into non muslim domestic threats like white power or anti-government militia groups king is pushing ahead with his narrow scope aims soley at islamic threats over eighty religious leaders from all the nominations were allotted to king last month asking to think twice about these investigations as the letter read quote building and maintaining trust with the muslim community is crucial to further in this cooperation and we fear your hearings will only so much so greater distrust and division at a time when unity and moral courage are needed so as king dividing our nation and

embarking on a twenty first century mccarthy esque which joining us to offer their takes a one hundred government and policy analyst at the muslim public affairs council and seen not with the president less government. dot org. i'm surprised not that common actually so many a seat and conservatives like tim mcveigh jim david advocates in there are a conservative that killed a lot of conservatives and these are all people who call claim that they were conservatives have killed a lot of people and conservatives like them continue to threaten america through twenty five years why can you actually give you a much longer list why won't peter king investigate these right these right wingers who are threatening america and have killed so many for the same reason willie sutton robbed banks it's where the money it's been you know the list of my partner of twenty four domestic muslim terrorist incidents forty or executed since nine eleven of them twelve them involved multiple. people not just

a single isolated person but multiple people working in league with terrorist organizations around the world and i'm not so you are i give you a long list of conservatives who are also i know you do you know you're a lot of times you're not accusing them of being conservative i mean people like your lawyer turned out not to be so a lot of those lives. conservative muslims killed a lot of americans on nine eleven. but have also killed a lot of muslims in other parts of the world how does the muslim community best deal with its murderous conservatives. and do you think that peter king's so-called investigation is going to increase the power and the number of these. radical or conservative muslim first of all thank you very much for having me on this time and second i think that like all other americans muslim americans are very concerned about terrorism you mentioned before that muslim violent extremists such as al-qaeda and bin laden to have been largely killing

a lot of other muslims around the world in the commission to the to the horrific acts on nine eleven and according to a study by west point eighty five percent of all of its victims are actually muslims so that's the first point the second point though it's going here to our shores is that most americans again are very very concerned about this issue and we're front line partners in the fight against terrorism according to a study that we've been doing so for several years now our post nine eleven terrorism incident database we have found that two out of every five plots have been thwarted since nine eleven because of the assistance of muslim community members so when representative king is saying for instance that our community is not cooperating with law enforcement or that we're not doing enough to combat extremism i'm sorry but his courts are wildly up the mark. peter king worked as a lawyer with roy cohn who was the famous lawyer for joe mccarthy. i think he's modeling

himself after joe mccarthy because he was right you know i have here in my pocket twenty four then to twenty four commoners working in this very hard because he was right so you think that the writing is or is appropriate to do this yes absolutely look and some parts of the muslim community do you know mohammed. he's a good friend of mine so i know what you're talking about there are large swaths of the muslim community that are working against terrorism he didn't say the entire muslim community isn't working against terrorism he has run into pockets of american and muslim communities look you don't work terrorism is terrorism here working against exposing terrorists you'd be looking to terrorism as a whole rather than just the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the united states and the world right now. are conducted by people acting in the name of islam so if you want to really want to do so if you are i don't want to do it so actually when we look at for instance terrorist attacks directed at the united states in

fact what we find is that since nine eleven there have been forty five affiliates but over eighty by non muslim extremists we're talking about neo nazis we're talking about anti-government extremists and other folks the other important point to make here is that of those eighty cases five of them actually involved chemical biological or radiological weapons attempted or actual possession of such weapons and none of them were by a muslim american case in point would be in two thousand and three william krar he was he was not. a failure he was an anti-government extremist his religion was not islam and frankly it doesn't even matter what his religion was but the point being is that there's so much of a focus right now soley on violent extremism i think what we need to do is have a comprehensive approach to this issue because if we don't then we're we're imperiling our national security and my point for me he said there are ninety five muslim related. versus eighty by everybody else on the planet and i said

forty to forty. four that the majority is non muslim. i have sitting on my desk a list of over two hundred conservative attacks last night. shot at the world war two my wife. walked into the unitarian church and murdered a couple of people. and globally but there isn't a gigantic problem with people murdering people in the name of islam. when you are in the name of you know growing up a seat and everyone you and i both will find common ground that the fact that we are very concerned about muslims. extremism the question the difference between i think you and i right now though is how do we go about it and that's the question are we going to be treating the overwhelming majority of muslim communities as partners in this fight because frankly we do have a dog in this fight or are we going to be treating them as suspects and what i'm

saying is that in order to go forward on this effectively we need to make sure that we're treating our muslim american communities as any other americans and as partners in this fight and i think you're going to arrive at this decision of how this hearing on the larger seconds he's been investigating for a long time and what he wants to do what he wants to do is expose the portions of the american muslim community that aren't cooperating in a way that really should rule. i wish that was absolutely true unfortunately though the way that this is going about is that this is focusing more on broad brush issues as opposed to actually targeting a violent fringe of individuals which both you and i are very very concerned about what in your opinion is the best way for america to deal with. radical islam with cancer i think i think that what we need to do is really look at the u.s. constitution i think that you both you and i see our constitution this together here and ultimately what i see is a constitutional counterterrorism strategy in which at the end of the day we need

to make sure is that the marketplace of ideas works itself out against any sort of extremist ideology where muslims are at the forefront of combating the ideas and law enforcement make sure that it is focused very targeted on those particular criminal elements so this way we can make sure that there is no injustices and we don't play into the hands of the propagandists for the terrorists. thank you both for being with us. we need to make sure that our efforts to make america safer are not undermining our values we need to put an end to islamophobia that's. still ahead here in the big picture roughly one hundred thirty two thousand teachers were laid off during the recession and what organization figured out a way to rehire them all twice will tell you how just. flimsy low and. rachel that these women.